


A Little Life

by lookingforatardis



Series: The Blank Years [4]
Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017), Call Me By Your Name - All Media Types, Call Me by Your Name - André Aciman
Genre: Angst, Elio's POV, F/M, M/M, Memories, Pregnancy, The Blank Years, You finally find out about Rowan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-17
Updated: 2018-02-17
Packaged: 2019-03-20 10:38:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13715910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lookingforatardis/pseuds/lookingforatardis
Summary: How did people just become parents? How was I supposed to raise a child with a girl whom I considered to be a sister more than anything? How was I supposed to do this when I had feelings for someone else? For more than one someone else?(Remember when Luca said he imagined Elio having a son? Well this is when Elio finds out that's gotten his friend pregnant after spending a summer in Lyon, France with her and Rowan) **This is a part of a collection of misc. fics taking place during the blank years when Elio and Oliver have no contact. Reading them in order is not necessarily required, but may be useful**





	A Little Life

**Author's Note:**

> TBY TIMELINE: Takes place during the four year mark of silence between Elio and Oliver, so it's been six years since that summer: Oliver’s kids are 3 and 1; Aaron is conceived/born this year. 
> 
> I listened to Greg Laswell's cover of This Woman's Work on repeat for the entirety of this fic, which is what the title's inspired by/from. Also listened to various Requiems to edit because of a specific line I wrote that I really like (and also because of what requiem's are and mean and symbolize for Elio's emotional roller coaster in this fic.)

“Je suis enceinte.”

Her words were simple in meaning and clear as ice, no confusion, no misunderstanding to be had. _I'm pregnant._ One time, we'd had sex one time, I think as the words fall apart in my mind. I tell her it's impossible, it's someone else's—

"Elio," she sighs. Pregnant. She's pregnant. I was rarely so careless but we had been drunk and it was the anniversary of the day he left me in Rome, she was there wearing a light dress that flowed in the wind and I was lost in her blue eyes when we did shots at her mother's villa. I look at her now and see the gentle way she was staring, how her hands were so small as they clung to her sides as if they were carved out of clay, her freckles prominent from spending so many days reading in the park, her dark hair curlier even than mine. "À quoi penses-tu; what are you thinking?" she asks, biting her lip. I shake my head and look down, scratching the back of my neck as I take a deep breath. How did people do this, how did people just become parents? How was I supposed to raise a child with a girl whom I considered a sister more than anything? How was I supposed to do this when I had feelings for someone else? For more than one someone else?

"Je ne sais pas quoi dire; I don't know what to say," I tell her honestly.

"J'ai parlé avec ma mère; I spoke to my mother—"

"Your _mother_ knows? Oh my god," I say, a mirthless laugh leaving my lungs as my feet take me away from her in an instant, circling around in a useless attempt to process the fact that Maria knew I'd gotten her daughter pregnant. Maria, who let me live with them over the summer while I composed the work for my master's thesis, Maria who had been so kind and trusting. God, I was terrible. I couldn't believe this. Maria knew I'd slept with Rowan in that house, God she nearly walked in on us once, she must think I slept with everyone I met, how horrifying, I was mortified, oh _god_. What kind of person must she think I was?

"Of course she knows, I had to tell someone and you were gone. And I wasn't about to tell Rowan," she says. _Rowan_. I had no idea what that was about, what we were, if I even _wanted_ that to be something after what happened. That entire summer was such a blur, I was just trying to forget everything and everyone I'd ever met in the past year that had led to the weeks when it all hit the fan. I’d been doing so well, I hadn’t even thought of _him_ in awhile, I had moved on, everything was falling into place. How did this even happen, how did I let this happen? I guess I always assumed there would be a day where repressing the memory of that summer with him in Italy would catch up to me, but I never imagined that it would leave my world altered in such a profound way, taking the lives of others and twisting them in the hand of fate that controlled my heart. I'd give anything to return to the day I'd told Rowan I would stay in France for the summer, the day that changed everything, the day when I’d given Ro the hope that set us on this course. I suppose all I really wanted was to go back and listen to the way the walls closed in, whispers echoing in the back of my mind that a summer in Lyon would ruin _everything_. "Elio—she said we could put him up for adoption—"

" _Him?"_ I turn sharply, looking at her, my heart dropping, the image of a small boy in overalls with dark hair and her eyes flashing in my head, stopping my heart, a _boy_.

"Well, I mean I don't know if it's a him. I guess I just sort of thought…. c’est bête; it's stupid."

"Wait—you don't want—" I ask, words trailing off my tongue and dissipating in the quiet around us. I remember the day I got to her childhood villa, the way the wind was the only thing I heard, much like the days of my youth. I should have gotten on a train and returned home in that moment, I shouldn't have stayed and allowed her and Rowan to take my summer away when there were so few days I was permitted to remember him in full.

"Well…no—Elio, I'm almost twenty-one. Dancers have so few years, I'm not spending mine raising a child." _Oh._ The words sink in my heart like a pebble that's lost its skip in the rivers we used to swim in. Suddenly, I feel empty, my life laid out before me as I saw opportunities lost to the task of raising a child I didn't even know yet. I was already a struggling musician, it wasn't like either of us were pursuing lucrative careers, though our families would help. But I see her life shattered around us, knowing she believed the dream she had at three years old and had spent her entire life chasing, even moving to America for it, the dream she was finally starting to see come true with the mentorship of an up-and-coming choreographer—it would all be lost the moment we decided to keep it. Of course she wouldn't do that, she didn't even want children at all, she'd told me a dozen times. "Elio?" she asks cautiously, her eyes nervous when I meet them.

"Yeah, no of course. Adoption," I say, my voice unfamiliar to my ears, my feet preventing me from running though I desperately wanted to, my heart racing despite my mind in a fog. "What will you do? About dance, I mean? If we do adoption, you’ll still carry—"

"I've already talked to the company. I'll miss next season but they'll let me finish the year and hold my audition space for after," she lets her voice trail off.

"This is all my fault—"

"No, Elio, je t'embrassais; I kissed you." I shake my head but she just smiles, almost as if she's saddened by the memory, as if she remembers how I'd cried that night, something I'd never done in front of her before. She sighs.  "It's not your fault, we both did this. You missed him and it just happened, ça va; it's okay," she says. I look away, embarrassed suddenly. I'd gotten so drunk I told her everything, about our summer, about the nights in Rome before he left me. Somehow we _still_ ended up fucking. At least it wasn't Rowan; I couldn't imagine a worse case scenario than that, on the anniversary, when the memory had been so clear it hurt even in my toes. "You should tell Ro, though. I didn't want to—I wasn't sure, you know, if you two were still..."

God I was reckless _._ I suddenly wished I could call him, ask him what he did when he found out his wife was pregnant with their first son, what to expect, how to cope, if he thought I'd be a good father, if he thought I could do it alone. Just hear his voice, anything, god, _anything_.

I'd met Claire after she came to a music theory tutoring class I held for undergrad students every fall, a favor to one of my mentors. She stayed late and talked about how she thought Stravinsky was insane but in a good way, how _Rite of Spring_ changed her goddamn life. She was vibrant, her ballet tights cut on the bottom of the feet so she could roll them up her calves, the pink showing under her skirt, the sleeves of her oversized blue and yellow sweater pushed up her thin arms. I'd been entranced by her vitality—it had been missing from my life that fall. She was beautiful, but she was young and I was far from interested. I'd been seeing a girl for some time at that point, though it was going nowhere fast. Claire was a reprieve from the stress of being around her, a reminder that life was meant to be experienced, not just endured. I'd struggled to remember as much in the past few years.

She always came to my tutoring classes even though—as I learned—she wasn't even taking the class; she'd been interested in one of the students who attended (he was a dancer, too) and went to catch his eye, but lost interest quickly. She came to my shows, slumped down on my bed and complained about her feet hurting. She dated my roommate, she broke it off, she convinced me to leave my girlfriend when she noticed I’d stopped eating from stress. She scolded me for being careless with lovers after and asked advice about her own. In many ways, she was exactly what I didn't even realize I had wanted Vimini to grow up to be. An almost sister, someone to count on, to confess to, to hold my secrets.

In that sense, it shouldn't have surprised me that I'd told her everything, of course I would trust her the way Oliver had trusted Vimini. When she invited me to her mother's home in Lyon for a week before I went back to Italy, I didn't think twice. When Rowan showed up and a week turned into two, then three, then two months, I was terrified, every day pulling me away, threatening to take memories I was afraid to talk about. I couldn't deny the fear that a summer in the streets of Lyon would erase everything, that if I spent a single summer away from the alleys that still echoed our laughter and Monet's Berm and To Die For and _heaven_ and the summer sun hitting the water just right—that I'd lose _him_ completely, that I'd lose _myself_.

When the anniversary came around, it was two days before we left France. I was packing in the guest room, Rowan kissed my neck and told me it could wait. Suddenly it was Oliver's hands on my waist, his teeth scraping against my skin, his hot breath at my ear, his body against mine. I threw up, barely making it to the bathroom, dizzy and heaving. It had happened before, too many times to count. The first time it happened, I cried. It was with Marzia in the first winter without him. She'd pressed herself against me and I couldn't help it, he was there, over me, consuming me as he had done so many nights in my memories. I had pushed her away and cried harder than I had in front of anyone since the week he left us, and Marzia never kissed me again. It was worse with men, and it was _worst_ with Rowan.

When he had rubbed his hand over my shoulder as I laid at the toilet, wiping my mouth, I felt my body convulse again, attempting to rid itself of his touch, watching the bile fill the bowl and wishing I could disappear with it, away from that subtle touch which was far from what I craved deep in my soul. I'd walked away and found Claire and we'd gotten drunk, each glass simultaneously ridding me of Oliver and pulling him back. I told her of his touch, of his eyes, of the way the light hit him just right and how his voice sounded when he talked about philosophy. I told her how I loved him, how I never said it because words were inadequate and to call him simply a lover would have been a disgrace, an absurdity, a joke. I didn't even remember how it happened, only that I didn't have protection and she didn't say anything when I called his name out instead of hers.

 

 

I knew I had to tell Rowan. He didn't even know I'd slept with her, and while we weren't dating, I felt an obligation to tell him. It had been Claire who introduced us, Claire who encouraged us, who invited him to Lyon to push us together. Her handprints were all over our entire complicated relationship, and he deserved to know that the one person he'd been trusting more than anyone this year was the one person I'd found solace in when he made things worse.

I wondered how Oliver would have told _me_ , if he had done it himself instead of having my father pass it along. I wonder if he thought about it. He had two children now, he probably never thought of me.

When I meet Rowan for dinner, I feel a tightness that borders on nausea or heartburn. He touches my arm and I try not to flinch, sit across from him and smile at something he's said, his words going through me like molasses, muted and heavy in their viscosity, taking far too long to settle in their meaning. He tells me about his day. I stare at the bread on the table. I think of the night Claire brought him to my tutoring session, _this isn't social hour,_ I'd said, _people actually study here, you know_. She did that sometimes, brought friends, as if she had the right, though I never made them leave. They were all dancers or artists or, like Rowan, just generally artsy people. They appreciated the discussions on notation more than the actual students sometimes. He'd worn a denim jacket and a _Pixies_ shirt which was haphazardly tucked into his pants. I'd learn that this was unusual, that his normal attire was dress shirts and sweater vests, that Claire had dressed him, for _me_. He'd smiled and asked all the right questions but he was eager and I'd done eager, I'd _been_ eager, and it made me ache. _He's a linguistics minor! He did a summer in Italy_. I'd smiled politely. I'd tried not to hold it against him. Claire had only known him a week at the time, already convinced he was my soulmate. His roommate had been in her dance company, and the three of them were fast friends before the Claire-Elio-and-Rowan friendship replaced it. I felt bad for the roommate sometimes, felt even worse that I could never remember his name even.

Every moment with Rowan was agonizing, particularly in the beginning. He was stiff and when he spoke of etymology, it didn't match the tenor or rhythm of Oliver's voice. His French was terrible but his Italian was good enough that it hurt, his Spanish beautiful though he rarely spoke it. He wore a thin blue bracelet that he wouldn't explain for months (it was nothing more than a token of a trip to California). The night he first kissed me, it was sloppy and I was drunk enough to let him, drunk enough to not care when he whispered in Italian. He'd iced me out afterwards, telling me he didn't remember, a tactic I couldn't appreciate. Silence was weak. It wasn't until Lyon, six months after we'd been introduced, that he told me he remembered everything, and I'd been sober enough that his words took me to another place with another man, his lips on mine not his own but another's, his hands in my hair mere ghosts, cheap imitations, a simple movement when I craved an entire symphony lost to time.

I let him seduce me a week later and held back from enjoying it as much as my body craved, fearing the way he moaned would induce a series of memories that I would not recover from. The shyness in his eyes, something I'd never seen in him prior to that night, brought me to my knees and I couldn't stop myself from wondering if perhaps Claire was right all along. The second time we slept together I knew being with him was nothing but an imitation of what I wanted when, while my eyes were closed, his hands became Oliver's against my skin. Under the sheets, I'd had the same feeling with him that I'd had _that_ first night, wondering how I lived without this, how I had managed to exist in a world deprived for so many years of his touch. It wasn't Rowan’s soul mingling with mine, though; it was Oliver's, the fingerprints so similar it left me breathless and somber, the night a final requiem for the me I still was in memory with Oliver, for the nights we’d shared when I moaned my own name, when he made me forget time existed and days were limited, when passion was anything but ephemeral and his touch was necessary to breathe.

The sunlight which streamed through too-thin curtains the following morning brought so much stress that I couldn't speak for hours. Rowan worried excessively, asking if I regretted it, if I wanted to take it back, his words daggers in my sides, memories of Oliver's fears overwhelming me. I took a day trip to Paris to clear my head, which became three days of solitude before I'd called my father and he insisted on booking me a train ticket home. My mother had held me when I arrived, asking if I was alright before even saying hello, telling me my summer room was ready for me. When I walked in, it was alive, I could see Oliver sneaking into my bed as vivid as ever, the morning when he took me at dawn, whispering his name in a hurried state against my neck and I nearly told him then and there that I was in love. I stood frozen, the doctorate student whose name I hadn't bothered to remember alerting my parents to my state of distress, my father talking me down from an emotional ledge and holding me against his chest. He didn't ask if I was okay, only what had happened. I told him, as I had grown accustomed to doing, as he had gently encouraged after I spiraled when Oliver got married.

When I returned to Lyon a few days later, I felt hollow and drained, told Rowan I needed to finish my thesis composition, that I needed space. I barely ate for a week. He was upbeat, always cautious with his touch but free with his eyes. I knew he worried, and eventually, the curiosity of whether or not every time with him—without inhibition—would feel like Oliver won out and I crawled back into bed with him, desiring it, desiring _him_. Rowan tried to hold me, to make it sentimental, a bond I wasn't prepared to create with someone I feared more than desired. I'd covered his mouth, stopped his words, begged the memories to return in passion and nearly sobbed when they didn't. I'd left his room and stared at my ceiling for hours until I passed out. How he didn't see the look in my eyes the next day was beyond me. I'd been desperate for him to see, to know it hadn't been him I'd fucked, but another, someone I would never have again, and the desire to be with Rowan was secondary at most to any desire I had been denied for six years.

The anniversary of Oliver leaving had been four days later.

"Elio? Stai bene; are you alright?" He rarely spoke to me in Italian, only when he wanted me to pay close attention. His words shake me and I'm back in the restaurant, the waiter staring at me with a grimace. I have no idea how long it had been since I spaced out. I order the first thing I see and worry about telling him the news. It had been six weeks since we'd left France and I still didn't know what exactly we were doing. So much of him reminded me of Oliver now that we'd slept together. He would withdraw as if putting up an elaborate façade for anyone he felt wasn't interested in hearing him out, and he would look at me with such fondness that I felt a sense of nausea or perhaps just nerves deep in my stomach. He was always far more tentative than I'd anticipated and he waited to hear me speak, valuing my words in a way only Oliver and my parents had. I feared I was drawn to him only for the similarities and occasional rush of déjà vu when he'd kiss me. His short temper and elitist attitude were excusable, at least as long as the look in his eyes could spark the same ping in my chest that Oliver's had.

"I slept with Claire," I blurt out later, after the waiter places our food in front of us. Fork in hand, he lifts his gaze, brows low and eyes tight.

"When?" I shrug, twirling pasta on my plate. I can feel his eyes on me and look up, telling him when, watching the timeline sink in. He asks if I love her, I tell him of course not, it wasn't like that, how could he even think that. He asks why I'm telling him if it obviously didn't mean anything and the moment crushes me under the weight of how badly I wish I hadn't allowed him to kiss me that night so long ago, if only I'd told him not to kiss me, maybe none of this would have happened, maybe I'd never have run home, maybe I'd never have slept with Claire, maybe I'd never have felt Oliver's heart as if it were my own again.

"She's," I pause, the word trapped in my mouth. I look at him carefully and consider not telling him. His right hand rests on the table, palm up, and though it's just out of reach it feels as though he's offering himself, telling me he's calm, he can hear what I have to say. I take a deep breath and it strikes me that I wouldn't struggle so much to tell him if I didn't want this. I think of a child, of holding _my_ child in _my_ arms and counting toes and fingers and seeing yawns and first smiles. I think of birthdays and piano recitals and laughter and nightmares. I hadn't told anyone, not even my family. Saying it out loud made it real, brought it into existence in a way hearing it hadn't. I knew Claire didn't want it, but she seemed willing to carry it, perhaps she would allow me to raise it as well. It had crossed my mind when she’d told me, I’d be lying if I said it hadn’t. I could move home, or move to Lyon, I could do it, our families would support me. I look back at Rowan, my head shaking slightly, almost in disbelief. I was really considering this, and I realized in that moment that I had more life to live than I was allowing myself, that for years I'd been caught in a state of limbo where almost nothing felt real, and the only things that had sent me spiraling, throwing my dignity and sense of worth aside each time, lost in my own world of memories and unable to escape the depression without using others as steps to climb out of the ditches I'd created. I needed something to help remind me to move forward, and I'd spent years thinking lovers could fill the space he left behind, only to be disappointed, each time, when it didn't help. I look at Rowan and realize that I don't really care what he thinks; I didn't fear his reaction, not anymore. It didn't matter what he thought, this was _my_ child and my life.

" _She's pregnant._ " I let the words drift away in the space between us as he processes. I'd call my parents tonight when they woke up in Italy. I'd tell them and ask if they thought I could do it, and then I'd call Claire and ask if it was alright that I raised the child, and then perhaps I'd call Maria. I'd tell them all, I'd tell everyone. I might even tell _him_.

I was going to be a father.

**Author's Note:**

> Woo!!! So Rowan is a guy! I really wasn't sure if I wanted him to be or not, but after awhile it just seemed wrong for Rowan to be anything but what he's become in my mind. I'm seriously considering writing a TBY fic on that week in France where Elio has a meltdown to end all meltdowns after sleeping with Rowan brings back all the memories. We'll see if I can go that angsty, because it would be a lot, even for me given how I've described it above. 
> 
> Next update will probably be from Oliver's POV! Let me know what you think :) ily guys, thank you so much for the support and the love. Yall mean everything to me. Special shout out to anyone who's ever given me feedback on these fics, either through comments or by beta testing them. Find me on tumblr! :)


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